


a fortune for your disaster

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, M/M, background Raven/Irene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-20 14:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2431652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex Summers never expected to save the world. Or fall in love. Or, X-Men: First Class set in the Pacific Rim universe with an emphasis on Alex/Armando and one key difference.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a fortune for your disaster

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Fall Out Boy's Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?  
> Warnings for discussion/mentions of death, alcohol use, and periods of general negativity and not-great mental health for one of the characters.

Alex Summers never expected to save the world. Or fall in love. Or ever even do much more than be crushed under the fallen rubble of his cell when every defense against the kaiju failed. But desperate times called for desperate measures, surprises, and more than a little bit of luck. Scientists found a way to apply mutations to jaegers, and the government's fear of kaiju outweighed their fear of mutants. So they offered him a chance, and he took it. They called the Pan Pacific Defense Corps the “salvation of the human race.” If he hadn't thought it would land him back in his cell, he might've said, “I thought I didn't count as human.” If he hadn't wanted this, wanted to do something _useful_ with his life, his mutation. He still wasn't sure about the salvation part, but it seemed to mostly involve destruction, and that was one thing he knew he could do.

 

* * *

  

Alex had never seen so many mutants in one place before. Well, technically speaking he’d never actually met another mutant in person, but he’d seen videos on TV, news report about the latest mutant terrorist attack, blurry cellphone footage of anti-mutant hate crimes, before the breach opened and the news outlets were suddenly preoccupied with the giant monsters rising from the depths of the ocean. But here, everyone was a mutant except for most of the scientists and presumably all of the armed guards positioned at every entrance to the shatterdome.

After the orientation, where all the candidates were told exactly how slim the odds of them actually becoming a jaeger pilot were and exactly how hellish training was, they were given the night off, someone shouted something about a party, and somehow Alex felt himself being swept up in a crowd of people who wanted one last night of fun before training began, carried along labyrinthine passages to an already packed common room. And the music was too loud and the press of bodies was too close and all Alex wanted to do was be alone again.

He skirted around the edge of the room, surreptitiously making his way toward the exit, when someone grabbed his arm. He whirled around, already in fight-flight mode, but she smiled and said, “Hey, don’t leave yet. Come join the real party.”

The ‘real party’ consisted of five people, including the girl who had ambushed Alex, lounging on a pair of rather small couches that had been pushed together in the corner, forming a barricade between them and some of the wilder drunken nonsense occurring in the middle of the room. The girl fall back dramatically, nearly hitting one of her friends in the face. One of the boys on the other couch looked up, saw Alex, and shifted over, waving for Alex to join him.

“Recruited someone else for your reverse harem?” joked the only other girl, leaning around the boy to get a better look at Alex, who felt too much like an exhibit in a museum. Or a zoo.

“That is why they call me Mystique,” she said, accepting a half-empty wine glass from the boy in whose lap she was sitting. “Oh, right. Introductions. Everyone, this is…”

“Alex,” he said.

“Just Alex?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “No fun superhero name?”

He stared, feeling as though he were at the center of an elaborate joke, when the boy next to him interceded. “Nice to meet you, Alex,” he said, extending his hand with a friendly, open smile. “You can call me Darwin.” And all Alex could think was,  _Oh no. He's cute._

He managed to deflect all questions about who he was and what he could do, resisting Darwin's gentle attempts to get to know him. “I spent the last five years in prison,” wasn’t exactly a good first impression, and neither was, “I can kill people and set things on fire.” So they introduced themselves and the conversation moved on, as Alex sunk back into the couch and the gentle pressure of Darwin’s shoulder against his was something real and tangible and comforting in the blur of unfamiliar voices, as they talked about everything from pop culture events he had missed, to speculating which candidates would make it past the first cuts, and finally to a pause in the chatter, during which Angel turned to Raven and said, smirking, “So is Irene going to be joining us?”

Raven smiled coyly and poured herself another drink. “She might drop by later, if they finish early at the lab.”

Hank looked up suddenly. “Did they work out that algorithm yet? I talked to Charles a few days ago, he said they were getting close.”

“Yeah, he’s been saying that for weeks. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Wait,” said Sean. “Charles as in Xavier, as in the founder of this whole project? You know him? Both of you?”

Raven rolled her eyes. “We grew up together.” She sipped her drink, then added, “Me and Charles, not me and Hank. Just to be clear.”

“Thanks,” muttered Hank.

“And you never mentioned it,” said Sean incredulously.

Raven sighed dramatically and finished her glass in one swallow. “Whatever. I don’t need people treating me special because of him. I’m good enough to be here on my own.”

“But he’s a legend,” Sean protested. “The stories you hear, just incredible. Everything in this whole shatterdome is under his control, the whole mutant jaeger project is _his_ thing…”

Raven glared, and if that glare were fixed on him, Alex would’ve been very very afraid. “Technically it’s mine and Darwin’s and Hank’s. How do you think they got jaegers that could change and adapt to any mutation, unless it was by using Darwin and I as lab rats.”

Darwin shrugged, his shoulder bumping Alex’s. “Well, I was already kicked out of college, so it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.” And there was a story there, hidden away, a story Alex wanted to hear, if he would tell it to him. Because Alex knew about being kicked out of school and bored and reckless and desperate. When Alex didn't look away, he said, "It's really not as dramatic as Raven makes it sound. I'm fine."

"Sure," said Alex. "Being expelled is so much fun."

"Could be worse." Alex didn't really want to think about  _that,_ and he also didn't want to piss off the one person who'd been genuinely nice to him and had seemed sincerely interested in his non-answers, so he kept his mouth shut.

Raven snorted and said bitterly, “Ah yes. But Charles has everything under control, clearly.”

“Raven, maybe you’ve had too much to drink,” said Angel, gently nudging the bottle away from Raven when she went to refill her glass.

“Well, yeah, but I’m also right. Hank and Irene are the best people they’ve got, Irene is only safe because they don’t know about her, but Charles _accidentally_ lets slip that Hank’s one of us so he has to throw him out here to fight for the chance to be a martyr. No, you know what? Not even a martyr. A sacrifice.”

And there it was. Some jaeger pilots were heroes, who got action figures and fan clubs and talk show appearances. But not the ones whose jaegers mimicked their own deadly abilities. It wasn’t a coincidence that this particular shatterdome suffered as many casualties as all the others combined, that it was always a mutant division team sent into the most dangerous fights with the least support from the regular military. They weren’t operating the weapons, they were the weapons. Monsters to fight monsters. And as usual, it was only Alex's mutation that made him noticed at all. He could blow things up, that was all anybody saw. He was a Molotov cocktail that they wanted to throw at the enemy to safely explode where no humans might get hurt.

Before he realized what he was doing, he was standing, and people were staring, expecting him to speak. But they were to be disappointed, and instead he all but ran away. He found a quiet room, and his breathing was too loud and his hands were trembling and he thought his shirt was several degrees too hot.

He heard footsteps behind him and he turned, ready to lash out with his fists or his fire, anything to be left alone, but it was only Darwin, hands out, palms open, smiling tentatively. “Sorry, man. Just wanted to check on you, make sure you’re alright.”

Alex’s hands dropped to his sides, and he tried to explain himself but his throat closed up and there weren’t words. He staggered, and Darwin was there to catch him and he leaned into Darwin and let Darwin hold him until he stopped shaking with anger and tears and believed, for the first time in a long time, that maybe things would turn out alright.

The next time they saw each other was on the combat room floor, at the beginning of the second round of training, where chance had thrown them together to fight for the possibility of finding their drift partner. They circled each other warily at first, but when he struck, Darwin countered and when Darwin lunged he blocked it, and neither of them could land a hit on the other. And so it went, each day of the testing learning each other's motions more completely than the day before and somewhere along the line Darwin became Armando and sparring became like dancing and Alex's initial attraction turned into something deeper and more powerful until it seemed impossible for Armando not to have noticed. But Alex said nothing, and he dreaded the assessment which would conclude that phase of training and mean the end of their daily matches.

It was the only time he felt completely free, completely safe. For once, he didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone. Sparring took all his energy, leaving none for his powers, and Armando couldn't be burned anyway, so Alex could relax and lose himself in the motion. Maybe it should have concerned him that fighting brought him the most peace, but it felt so natural that the thought hardly even occurred to it, and it didn’t take long for him to know the rhythms of Armando’s movements better than he knew his own heartbeat.

They stayed late one night, ostensibly to get more practice before the assessment, but anyone could have told you that neither of them really needed it. It was late, and Alex’s technique was getting sloppy, so that when he struck out and Armando blocked, his staff snapped in two under the force of the blow. Alex stepped back, shaking out his stinging hands, and was completely unprepared for Armando to throw away his own staff and aim a punch at Alex’s chest. He blocked it, but barely in time, and and Armando took advantage of Alex's distraction to kick his legs out from under him. Alex grabbed at him, trying to stay upright, and Armando was laughing they both fell to the floor.

Alex fell flat on his back and that might’ve been what knocked the wind out of him and made him suddenly short of breath, or it might’ve been that Armando had fallen on top of him, hands planted on either side of Alex’s head, grinning wildly as he said, “I win.”

Alex reached up without thinking and grabbed the front of Armando’s shirt, pulling him down into a kiss.

 

* * *

  

They completed their training together and were assigned to their jaeger, and they worked better together than even teams that had been together for years, not that there were many of those left anyway. Armando was in tune with the machine in a way that no other pilot could match, partly because his DNA, along with Raven's, had helped create it, partly because he was just that good. It was generally accepted as true that if he and Raven were drift compatible, they would be unstoppable. Some said he should be paired with her anyway, and that their mutual bond with the jaeger would be enough. Usually these were the same people who thought Alex should've been left in prison, that he was too dangerous. Though, of course, they never said this within earshot of either Alex or Armando. And soon enough the dissenters were silenced by their success together, the ferocity of Alex's attack, their complete compatibility.

It was the happiest time of Alex’s life and though it was only nine months it seemed longer in his memories, as if each day contained years and he and Armando had known each other for a lifetime. But it was only nine months, and when those nine months were up, Evolving Chaos, seven drops and seven kills to her name, was found in pieces on a California beach, her lone pilot unconscious in the sand, trapped in the nightmares of his empty mind, reliving the end of the fight when a bolt of energy- his gift to the jaeger- had bounced off the kaiju's thick armored skin and hit the right side of the cockpit and the red glow lit up Armando's face and he reached out and then everything was an explosion of light and silence, so much silence, and Alex never knew such suffering could be so quiet but the explosion ripped Armando from his mind and he thought he could never be whole again.

 

* * *

  

He walked out of the infirmary in the middle of night. Everything was too silent, clean and soft and white, nothing to distract him. The shatterdome was a machine, a machine that could kept working while Alex couldn’t, and why did they need one more broken part, useless without its pair?

He wandered, aimlessly at first, but the world was still at war and he still felt the urgency to be doing _something_. That was the only thing, that and a vague idea of _what he would have wanted_ , that kept Alex from going back to prison, causing whatever destruction he had to before they agreed to take him in. If he had ever been able to think he was innocent before, he knew was not now.

When he had been on trial, there had been talk of the cure, still only in experimental phases at the time. He wished they had given it to him them.

If the labs studying mutants hadn’t shifted to studying kaiju and the pharmaceutical companies had stopped making the cure and started replicating kaiju toxins, Alex would’ve found a way to take the cure himself.

 

* * *

 

Working on the wall was dangerous and uncertain, but maybe that was part of the allure. And besides, it was somewhere he could be lost in the crowd and still pretend he was being useful. Because someday, in a year, maybe, or in a month, a kaiju would make landfall there and the wall wouldn’t stop it and he would see if he could take it down on his own before his own flames consumed him.

It took them almost two years, but he couldn’t stay hidden forever. 

“Please, Alex.”

“I can’t. I can’t go back.”

“We need you. The world needs you. We’re not with the military anymore, we’re independent. No more scientists and soldiers, just us, the last line of defense. This wall of yours won’t last.” The cheerful, optimistic Raven he had known was gone, replaced by a new Raven with tired eyes and a pronounced limp and steel in her voice.

“I can’t have anyone else in my head, please, you have to understand that.”

Her face tightened. "Oh, I do," she said, and he noticed for the first time the medal pinned to her chest and connected it with a news report he’d only been half-listening to, about Raven and Irene’s jaeger going down in San Francisco Bay. And how Irene had only left the lab for the drift when it was clear that Raven was compatible with no one else. “Raven, I’m sorry, I…”

“Forget it. That’s not why I’m here.”

There was a clatter of footsteps as the rest of Raven’s entourage arrived. “Marshal, you were supposed to wait for clearance-” said one of the aids, someone he vaguely recognized as having been one of the younger ranger candidates just before his departure. When she noticed Alex her tone changed abruptly from respectful reproach to something close to awe. “You found him.”

And then one of them addressed Alex, and his voice sounded far too close to another voice, a voice whose exact pitch and rhythms had faded from Alex’s memory, no matter how much he tried to hold on to it.

“I did tell her to wait for me.”

No.

No. This couldn’t be happening. He was dead, dead because of Alex, and Alex hadn’t been able to sleep since without seeing the moment imprinted on his eyelids, the cockpit washed in red light, the last expression on Armando’s face one of apology…

“Come on, man. Takes more than a category four to get rid of me.” He seemed so _real_ , and yet if Raven hadn’t been standing next to him, Alex would’ve suspected that she was impersonating him as a method of convincing Alex to return. And he was so lost and desperate and bored it almost would’ve worked.

He tried to speak but his tongue was like lead in his mouth and his legs felt numb as he stumbled a few steps closer, not close enough to touch, close enough to see him more clearly, as if he hadn’t recognized him well enough by voice alone. “How…”

“When they say I can adapt to anything, they really do mean _anything_. Even if it means completely remaking my body out of scattered atoms.”

Oh. Of course. Adapt to survive. “You were gone for so long.”

“I'm back now,” he said, reaching for Alex’s hand, but Alex pulled away.

“I felt it, when you died. We were still in the drift and I felt what you felt and then there was nothing… I thought that I would feel it if you came back, that somehow, I would know. I thought that’s what it meant, to be drift compatible, that I would know, if we really were. But then I thought, what if whatever we were was cancelled out when I was the one who killed you.”

“Please, Alex, don’t.” Armando closed his eyes, hesitated, as if searching for the right words. “Even when I wasn't corporeal, I was conscious. I could’ve let myself fade away. But the thing that kept me together, trying to reform, was the thought of returning to you.”

He reached out once more for Alex’s hand and this time Alex was reaching too. First their hands met, and Alex watched their fingers lock together, fitting into place as if his hadn’t been worn away by years of separation. And then Armando’s arms were around him, hugging him tightly, and Alex closed his eyes, memorizing all the things he had forgotten, the sound of his breath, the smell of his skin, the way holding him felt like stepping into a pocket of the universe that was entirely theirs.

They broke apart slowly, unwilling to return to face the reality that awaited them. Alex said nothing and didn’t look back as they followed Raven to the helicopter, and they fell into step side by side, ready to face the end of the world together.


End file.
